Not sure if this is your issue, but If your site *requires* SSL, then it will fail with a 403 Forbidden error before it gets a chance to perform any sort of HTTP redirect.

Depending on what you're using IIS for, it may not be advisable to change the SSL requirements to allow non-SSL connections. For example, when you're working with Outlook Web Access on Exchange Server all the various Exchange Server related sites inherit their settings from the top level "Default Web Site", which is where the SSL Required flag is set. If you change it, you have to go into all of the sub-sites and manually reconfigure them to require SSL, it's a significant configuration change to get it working and IMHO quite scary to do to a production Exchange server.

If this is what your problem is, one thing I've done successfully is create a custom "403.4" Error Page under Default Web Site, configure it to respond with a 302 Redirect to your HTTPS address. The 403.4 error code is specifically the "Forbidden because SSL is required" error code.

Redirect will work only in you are using a different site... lets says if users types: remote.yourdomain.com you'll redirect to remoteweb.yourdomain.com and for this you'll create a site in your II7 with the redirect option.

To enable or force the use of https open for the desire site the SSL Settings and click on Require SSL and the type of Client certificate to use.

Remember to add a binding on the website to the SSL port and IP you need.

I followed your suggestion and then tried the http URL and I got an empty page.
Next I undid the changes to the SSL settings page that you had suggested and just for the fun of it tried the http URL again. Now it SURPRISINGLY redirected to the HTTPS URL and the site opened.
Hard to explain this behavior. Should I give you the points? Have no idea what caused the redirect to work after I unconfigured the SSL changes that you suggested.

This issue is solved but not really clear what fixed the issue. Thanks

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